Stories by: Patrick Thibodeau

Procter & Gamble Co. (P&G), which is ranked 20th on the Fortune 500 list, can afford to buy its employees laptops. But it is instead letting several hundred of its workers use their own laptops as part of a workplace experiment.

When Proctor & Gamble Co., wants something from its outsourcer, Hewlett Packard Co., it doesn't deal with help desks, trouble tickets or support tiers. It gets attention from the top levels of the vendor's executive ranks.

IT employment grew by 0.37%, or 14,000 jobs, in February, one of the strongest month-to-month gains since 2008, according to the TechServe Alliance, an IT services industry group that analyzes U.S. Labor Department unemployment data.

IBM has issued layoff notices to more than 400 workers, according to the Alliance@IBM/CWA Local 1701, an employee organization that has been the principal source of layoff information at the company.

LAS VEGAS - IBM yesterday outlined plans to to expand into a new line of business that may ultimately incorporate futuristic technologies, such as paint infused with nano-sized sensors, for managing energy usage in buildings and even cities.

ARLINGTON, Va. -- Google's revelation last month that attacks out of China resulted in the theft of some of its data drew attention to the broader question at the Black Hat conference here over what can be done to the villains.

On the eve of President Barack Obama's State of the Union address Wednesday, a speech that's expected to focus on the need for jobs, the nation's largest engineering association is warning that the latest jobs data is "discouraging" for engineering.

James Gosling, the father of the Java programming language, posted the image of a tombstone on his blog last week, an R.I.P., for Sun Microsystems. Before long. more than 800 employees, outside developers and others had posted comments.

Microsoft's top legal official yesterday called on the US Congress to create new laws that would give data stored in the cloud the same protections as data stored on a PC. He also called for tougher penalties for hackers who access data centers, citing significant damage that's often done in such attacks.

Google's threat to pull out of China is getting very little support from other businesses or the U.S. government. And that's because Google is irrelevant to the overall forces shaping global businesses.